Herb, dioecious, caespitose perennial, forming small dense tussocks; cluster roots present. Cataphylls 10–15 mm long, glossy, tan to brown, scarious, covering a pale brown woolly pubescence. Culms simple, slender, terete, 0.5–0.8 mm diam., 15–40 cm long, smooth to minutely striate, pale-to grey-green, with a covering of pale, appressed fan hairs; internodes 3.5–6 cm long. Sheaths 2–10 mm long, brown, mostly glabrous or with pale fan hairs, acute to truncate; lamina short, caducous, to c. 5 mm long; membranous margin 2.5–3 mm wide. Inflorescence: male spikelets erect to drooping on filiform pedicels, the pedicels whitish with a minute tomentum; females loosely crowded in fascicles, the fascicles solitary and terminal or up to c. 5 at the upper nodes. Male spikelets ovoid to obloid, 4–8 mm long, 2–4 mm wide; glumes 8–23, all fertile, ovate, acuminate, 2.7–5.2 mm long with a short mucro to 0.4 mm long, glabrous, brown, with a prominent membranous margin. Female fascicles initially narrow-ovoid, becoming loosely-ovoid to somewhat spreading with age, to c. 1 cm long and c. 0.5 cm wide, with c. 5–10 flowers; fascicles surrounded by lanceolate, scarious spathes 7–8 mm long and 2–4 mm wide, brown, becoming greyish with age, with prominent hyaline apical margins and an erect awn to 3 mm long; within the fascicle groups of 1–3 flowers and their glumes enclosed by smaller bracts; some glumes with abortive flowers. Male flowers: stamens attached to a swollen base; tepals 5, membranous, hyaline, glabrous; outer tepals linear-lanceolate, acute, weakly keeled, 1–2 mm long; inner tepals linear, slightly shorter; upper flowers with all tepals much-reduced; stamens 3; anthers c. 1.0 mm long; filaments c. 0.2–0.8 mm long; pistillode absent. Female flowers: pedicellate, pedicels 0.5 mm long, pubescent with long white hairs; tepals 6; outer tepals lanceolate, 4–12 mm long, pubescent with short rigid white hairs, tapering to an erect awn to 8 mm long; inner tepals narrow-elliptic to lanceolate, acute to obtuse, 1.7–2.3 mm long, brown, fimbriate with brown or orange hairs; staminodes absent; style 3-branched, connate for at least half the length, the base persistent on the nut. Nut ellipsoid, 1–2 mm long, smooth, pale brown. Culm anatomy: chlorenchyma of 2–4 layers of short cells, interrupted by pillar cells and partial sclerenchyma ridges opposite the outer vascular bundles, central cavity present or absent.
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